With Rafael Nadal out of the draw at this Slam, the big question became which of the top 2 would draw Murray in the semifinals. David Ferrer is no pushover, but he is definitely a class below the top 3 seeds here. And Federer clearly drew the tougher semifinal. With all due respect to Ferrer, Murray is just a tougher opponent than he is. We all saw what Murray did to Federer in the Gold Medal Match at the Olympics less than a month ago. And that match will sit in everyone’s minds-most of all Federer’s-now that Federer and Murray are in the same half of the draw. Federer might be just a little intimidated by how much he was outplayed, but he also relishes the opportunities to get revenge and prove the world wrong. Djokovic, meanwhile, drew Ferrer as his semifinal opponent but there are really a ton of players who could come out of that quarter.

As always, we will rank the four quarters of the draw from toughest to easiest. We will determine how tough each quarter is by how tough the most likely matches will be for that quarter’s top seed in each round. Also, several times throughout the article we will refer back to our US Open preview. So if you haven’t seen that yet, you might want to check it out here. Also, the qualifiers haven’t been placed in the draw. In fact, the second round of qualifying isn’t even completed yet, let alone the third. So we won’t even really have an idea of who the qualifiers will be until Friday afternoon.

To see the entire article, please click here. As always, thoughts and opinions are welcome and requested.